Monday, October 31, 2016

So far, on Quora.com, there have been four excellent answers to this question: discussing

- the confusing role of people,

-the requirements problems,

-the interactions with the physical world.

Each of these factors certainly makes software development more complex, and processes such as Agile are designed to cope with this complexity. But, the ultimate complexity factor is software testing.

Why testing? In the software development literature, testing is not usually treated as a glamorous part of development, but when we're testing, we're up against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which warns us that perfection is ultimately unobtainable.

So, even if we absolutely knew all the requirements (which we can't, of course), kept all the human factors under control (also impossible), and knew exactly all the physical properties of the real world (once more, impossible), we would still never be able to perform the infinite number of tests to cover all possible situations.

In other words, the software could still surprise us at any time. That's what I call complexity.

Sunday, October 09, 2016

The questioner wrote, "Besides practicing, what else can I do to improve my coding skills?"

I took up the challenge with a warning:

Be careful of practice, because if that’s all you do, you’ll just be reinforcing your bad habits.

Instead, read and understand the coding of others. Reviewing code is the fastest way to improve your own code. If the reviewed code is well done, you learn good techniques. If it’s badly done, you learn what things to avoid.

If you’re on an Agile team, reviewing the code of others will be a natural part of your work, and you’ll also learn from others’ reviews of your work.

In any case, one of the very best ways to read and understand the code of others is by participating in software testing. By testing, you learn what really works and what really causes trouble.

And, of course, you should always take the opportunity not just to study code, but to watch others actually producing that code. What tools do they use? How do they use them? What’s their thinking process? What do they read to learn?

Finally, read some good books about thinking, reviewing, and learning. I’ve written some, and my own books refer to others. (http://www.geraldmweinberg.com)